The integration of heterogeneous data sources in IT systems is highly complex to this day, in particular because data from different, distributed sources are described differently, are available in different formats, and are available through different technical means of data management.
In information extraction, customer master data for instance must be quickly, easily and uniformly be accessible, i.e. received from the data maintaining sources. In this process it is required to understand the meaning of the data, in order to query the correct data in the correct sequence. For example, in a service oriented architecture (SOA), maintenance on individual services responsible for such a task is extremely complex and hardly feasible.
Other problems result within the field of data interoperability when processing data automatically. In the context of the present invention, data interoperability refers to the ability to allow diverse, heterogeneous systems, to interact as seamlessly as possible to exchange information in an efficient way. This should for example be made for consolidation of costumer master data from different sources into a single business object as well as for transfer of costumer master data within the scope of a purchase operation. A particular problem is that required respectively necessary data objects are hold available in different data sources and may be subject to differing data descriptions.
Further, data agility calls for stable technical services based on heterogeneous data sources and heterogeneous systems. Data agility refers to the independence of interfaces and models, as well as a rapid integration of new data sources. The problem here lays in the continually changing data and data models, which hamper the desired data source homogeneity. Further, new data sources require completely new interfaces and furthermore interfaces which are adaptable according to changing requirements which result in continuously adaptions of services.